


we've nothing more to do here; nor anywhere else

by millehuitcent



Category: Mikey and Nicky (1976)
Genre: (also sort of), (sort of), Character Study, Fix-It, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, also some lesbians, this is all just mikey being sad after the end of the movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:01:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24701230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/millehuitcent/pseuds/millehuitcent
Summary: : It's the start that's difficult.: You can start from anything.: Yes, but you have to decide.
Relationships: Mikey/Nicky
Comments: 7
Kudos: 35





	we've nothing more to do here; nor anywhere else

**Author's Note:**

> title and summary from Beckett's Waiting for Godot. alternative quote: _that's how it is on a bitch of an earth_ , but then I decided against it
> 
> I wrote this listening to [this fantastic playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3Nv7UjkXucqp1gG409QRdZ?si=nyVUcm4jRuaTrT_KlZIqWg)!!

Kinney driving right off after his deed had come at no surprise. That had been no joke; there _actually_ was no parking on Mikey's street. Even if there had been, Kinney was just fucking done with the whole shitty affair. Besides, the cleanup wasn't part of his contract. He was just the hitman.

Disposing of the body, that was a job for Resnick's men. Supposedly. But Resnick wouldn’t hear of the completed hit until after his morning cappuccino, at least, and who the hell knew when that would be, now. The man wasn't getting any younger. So Mikey's job it was. It was Mikey's doorstep, after all.

And so Kinney had driven off, and Nicky had one bullet hole in him. Only one – the other two shots had missed; a man tired like Kinney made no good marksman.

And now Mikey had Nicky's blood on his hands.

···

Mikey had Nicky’s blood on his hands. _Literally,_ because he’d had to move him. He’d never been one for fancy images or for speaking in riddles, Mikey, had never been good with words. Too straightforward, annoyingly honest: that was him.

And Nicky had always been a bit too good with them. Maybe that was what had gotten them here, in the end: Nicky pale as a sheet and passed out on the ground, Mikey with the bloody hands.

That stuff – blood – got fucking everywhere, and was near-impossible to wash off once it dried. Mikey knew that, of course, he was used to it, pretty much. This wasn’t his first contract.

He hadn’t thought twice about it, when it had been Ed Lipsky last week. But it was a strange look on Nicky. New. Inconvenient, as well, bleeding out like that, making a mess all over Annie’s tidy geraniums. That was a shame; Annie had put so much effort in the geraniums. Not to mention Ora would be mad.

Mikey hadn't meant for it to go like that.

Well, he had, sort of – had known it would go like that from the second he'd opened the door and Nicky had fallen into his arms. They had both known, as a man who was alive wrapped both his arms around an already-dead man. But Mikey had still hoped it would be somewhat different, at least. Not on the geraniums and everything. Maybe he'd been naive. That was another problem of his. Another reason why Resnick didn't like him much.

If he’d known, thirty years ago, that it would all end with Nicky left for dead on his front lawn, he wouldn’t have believed it. Or, well, maybe he’d have. It had always been the two of them, after all, just the two of them. Whose other lawn would Nicky get shot on, if not his?

···

It wasn't quite the end of it all, though. “Oh good,” Mikey muttered to himself, as Ora's car screeched down in the street, stopping right about where Kinney’s had been. She got out, swore loud enough for Mikey to hear, tucked her unlit cigarette behind her ear, and hopped over the garden fence. Mikey pressed a bit harder on Nicky's side so it wouldn’t bleed so damn much.

···

_Aurora_ was Italian for dawn. Ora _was_ like dawn, in a way: impossible to ignore, impossible to pin down. All the better for her, Mikey supposed. There had to be more than one fucker on this side of New York trying to beat up a dyke. Her hair was short and curly like morning clouds, and yellow like the first light of sun.

Somehow, she was trained like those military doctors they sent to Vietnam, though she hated the war. Annie probably knew how to make sense of that – and probably of the rest of her as well. As for himself, Mikey had long given up undersanding Ora. He didn’t mind. He didn’t need logic out of her. Right now, the only thing he needed was another sunrise for Nicky.

···

Eventually, Ora left the guest room where Nicky had finally stopped bleeding, but only after he'd stained Annie’s mom's quilted bedspread.

“That’s pretty much all I can do." She said, nodded once, and went to join Annie who was sleeping through it all in the next room over.

Another day, Ora would have stayed behind to chat a bit – sometimes, Mikey thought she liked him better than his own wide did. But right now, she was still stuck up on the damned geraniums. He could tell. She didn't care about flowers – but she did care about Annie, and the geraniums were Annie’s.

Mikey sighed and settled in the chair he had dragged to Nicky’s bedside. No way he was getting any sleep. He’d just had a coffee, and besides, the way Nicky looked, pale and unconscious, had him on pins and needles. Nicky had missed a spot when he’d shaved earlier, on the crook of his neck, and Mikey was itching to do something about it. Anything. Put his fingers on it.

Maybe he could stay awake until Annie and the kid woke up, and then he’d have himself a distraction. Annie and Ora were always entertaining, in their way.

Annie not loving him was fine; it wasn’t the point. She and him were good for business. She knew how to get the best tomatoes for cheap at the store, and how to get the most comfortable position in a contract. Her memory was plain awful, at that, which got you far working with Resnick. In their business, a natural ability to make information disappear was a terrific asset.

Annie's reputation, how practical their marriage was, that was probably why no one had shit to say about Italian Mikey’s son being blonde and broad like the golden calf. Broad and blonde like dawn.

Well, either that or no one noticed. No one looked twice at Mikey, usually. Not even his wife.

···

Nicky looked at him. Really looked at him. Well, right now he didn’t, laying on Mikey’s guest bed like it was a coffin. But back in the day – Mikey could have spent the night in the way Nicky's eyes shone on him, the buzz of his full attention.

Nicky had seen it all, all of him. Micky knew, remembered, even if Nicky didn't. Pretended he didn't. Made the information disappear.

Nicky knew his given name was Michelangelo; as a kid he’d spent weeks bugging Mikey’s Aunt Rosie until she showed him how to pronounce it the Italian way. He'd bragged about it forever, too: even Mikey had no idea how to pronounce it the Italian way. He’d always needed to be special, Nicky, even then. And he'd already been so good with words too, using them like cards in a game – he’d always been awfully lucky at cards. And if he ever wasn’t, then he got to rigging the game until he came up on top anyways.

That was the pair of them: chatterbox Nick and stuttering Mike. Even after Mikey kicked his stammer, Nicky kept on his habit of always running his damn mouth. Never shut up, for as long as Mikey had known him. Not when he ate, not when he worked, not even when he fucked. Especially not when he fucked.

That bagged him tons of girls, or so he told Mikey, though maybe that was just to annoy him. He'd heard how the girls talked about Nicky, back then – a big-headed bastard, that's what they called him. Mikey was annoyed all the same: at Nicky for being a prick, at the girls for stealing him away from Mikey and badmouthing him afterwards, at himself for having a head full of stupid notions. Of fights and split lips and kissing Nicky on the crook of his neck.

Nicky always told the girls what they wanted to hear. Always told everyone what they wanted to hear, in fact, with a charming smile on top. Except for Mikey. He never said all those things that Mikey wanted to hear, even though he had to have known – that Mikey would have sold his soul to the devil, or to Resnick, which was the same, to hear them.

To Mikey, Nicky said everything that didn’t fit in with the rest, with the calculated jokes, with the smart words. Showed him the cards up his sleeve. The ugly and the plain. Which Nicky had to think was ugly as well, because he did not do plain. Always had to be special. In a way, that had to be why he'd been so interested in necking with Mikey – probably just another crazy whim. 

Mikey didn't mind plain, didn't mind it at all. He liked habits, liked routine. He liked how predictable Nicky was, when he would make the same surprised noise every time Mikey bit at his collarbone, when he always sleepily stroked Mikey's hair afterwards. He liked how he would never shut up, even when he fucked, talking nonsense through it all, bossing him around even though it wasn't as if Mikey would do what he was told anyways. It felt better than the shy blowjobs he got from the uptown girls with the prettily curled hair.

They hadn’t done it in forever – the biting on collarbones and the bossing around and the fucking and the sleepy hair-stroking. Maybe they never would do it again. Mikey thought Nicky still wanted to, though; as for himself, he certainly did. The only thing was, Nicky was such a mess these days, and Mikey was not sure he could bear to be so near to him in that state. He rarely felt guilt, but he could never feel quite at ease unless Nicky was happy, either. It would have been nice to go see that movie. In the dark theater, maybe Mikey could have touched Nicky without feeling like he was reaching across hell and purgatory to find him.

···

_You have no idea who I am when there’s people around,_ Mikey had told Nicky. That, too, had been unfair of him. He'd seen how Nicky had looked puzzled at the dig. Because for the longest time, who Mikey was, who Nicky was, that was one and the same. They went together like gin and tonic. Like half-and-half, made of the same stuff, only slightly different but balancing each other out.

Annie and Ora were like that, too. It hadn’t always been easy, between them, still wasn’t really, with Mikey being as he was in the way. But they always had a way to speak to each other and they would listen.

And Nicky had a way of looking at Mikey so that he would see him, even when nobody else saw Mikey. Even when Nicky was so messed up that he saw nobody else.

···

Mikey startled when the kid’s alarm clock went off. He must have fallen into a doze. He blinked down at Nicky, who hadn’t moved at all, and found his neck was hurting something awful. He’d not slept long, but he’d dreamed, he was almost certain. He hadn’t dreamed in forever.

 _My Mikey’s a dreamer,_ his mother always said. Hell, but that was long ago, so long ago it might not even have happened. What difference would it make? None, none at all. Yet Mikey could not help but remember. These days, his memory felt longer than Goldie Hawn’s skinny ass. And a great deal heavier at that, like it was holding him down.

Mikey didn’t dream anymore. What was left to dream about, when Mikey had all that a man could ever want? A lovely house and a lovely wife, and a job that paid enough?

What was there to dream about, when Mikey had nothing he’d ever wanted? When his wife’s lover was a dyke, and his son wasn’t his, and Nicky didn’t pick up his calls anymore?

Mikey remembered though. Memories were the practical man’s dreams, after all. A practical man, with a practical marriage, that was what Mikey had become.

Sometimes he wished he wouldn’t remember. Wouldn’t remember Nicky’s dark eyes, like a cup of strong coffee with laughter at the bottom. What their voices had been like, before they got rough with cheap cigarette smoke, before everything got serious. The way Nicky had scoured the whole neighborhood, looking for an ice seller in the middle of July, after Mikey had gotten a split lip on his third contract. His brash hands on his hips. Not afraid, never afraid.

···

Annie and Mikey made a great pair for business. He was lucky to have her. She wasn’t; it was pretty clear she’d gotten the short end of the stick in their arrangement. Unlike Mikey, she hadn’t given up on dreaming yet, so it was not as easy for her to settle for practicality. It was shitty, but it was as good as either of them could get. Loving Ora – that was one pickle Annie hadn’t yet been able to bargain her way out of.

Nicky and him, though... Things between them had started going to shit the moment they started doing business together. Everyone knew that. And now Nicky was afraid all the time. He'd always had a prickly side to him, one that could have been cynic if it wasn’t so ridiculously jittery. But Mikey used to be able to soothe the bitterness out of him. Straighten up the mess. Answered his calls, kissed the top of his hair, and stroked his cheek, and called him _my sweet boy_ , until it became at least somewhat true.

Mikey would have tried it again, last night. But Nicky was too afraid. Scared. So scared he'd have let Mikey off him. The moron.

···

Nicky was lucky at cards. _Lucky at cards, unlucky in love,_ or so old Lou down at the Howard street corner always said.

Unlucky wasn’t dead, though.

That’s what Mikey told himself with his cheek pressed to Nicky’s thigh. He didn’t dare lay his head on his chest, for fear of jostling his wounds, though he would have liked to hear his heart. Instead, he held onto his wrist where he could feel his pulse. Nicky’s skin was fever-warm, alive-warm. If Mikey laced their fingers together, his palm would feel clammy, he was sure of it.

But Mikey’s hands still smelled like blood, plus soap from trying to scrub them clean. The mix was disgusting, so Mikey kept his hands to himself. There would be plenty of time later.

···

“Am I dead?” Rasped Nicky when he finally came to. He looked even paler with his eyes open.

“Depends who you ask. To Resnick, I s’pose you are.”

"What the fuck does that mean, Mikey, am I dead? Is this hell?” Fear seeped into his eyes again. Mikey scoffed. Fear would serve a dead man right.

“I told you there’s no such thing as hell, you moron. You’re still alive, only Kinney managed to land his shot.”

“He sure did.” Nicky looked down at himself, winced when he tried to move.

“Easy, easy.”

Nicky looked back at Mikey. “Why didn’t you let me in?”

“You’re in alright, aren’t you?”

“You’re a right bastard for not opening the door.”

There was a long silence. Mikey stared at Nicky. Eventually Nicky dropped his eyes, and fidgeted in search for a comfortable position, grimacing the whole time. He stopped all at once when he suddenly caught sight of Mikey’s hands.

“Your hands're filthy.”

“Guess they are. It’s your fault, though. Be good and hold them, will you?”

Nicky reached for his hand and fell back into unconsciousness.

···

There would be plenty of time later. They could take Mikey’s car and drive. Just like they’d always wanted to, but never could because there was Mikey’s Dad and then Nicky’s Ma and then the whole thing with Resnick.

Well, nothing was left of it now, all of it dead. Mikey would kiss Annie goodbye for the last time, tell Ora’s kid to be good. Resnick wouldn’t miss him. That’d be one more things off his old nerves.

They’d drive, and drive, and stop at dive bars. That would last them a while. They'd drink gin and tonic at night, and coffee with half-and-half in the morning, and maybe once some love song would come on the radio or the jukebox, and Nicky would look at him like nothing had ever been serious and put his arm around him and kiss him again.

They’d share motel rooms, and when they’d grow tired of it they’d settle somewhere. Somewhere sunny, like the Italian village in his Aunt Rosie’s stories. Mikey had saved enough for them to build something new. It would last them another while, maybe, before they’d ruin that, too. Unlucky in love and all. And then – they’d do it all over again.

Mikey didn’t dream, but Mikey remembered, and Mikey planned. Maybe he even hoped, too.

**Author's Note:**

> I watched the movie 2 nights ago, and I just _had_ to write something for it. I never expected to get so long, but, well, I ramble.... I'm not super satisfied, but I hope it's at least semi good!!
> 
> I'm on [tumblr](pinkcolumbo.tumblr.com)!


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